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Friday, May 13, 2016

National Accounts Step Children

Thanks to Steve Erbach (aka Sparkly Steve)  and Lauri Romaniuk for this idea! The question came up on the forum as to whether you could change the National Account for a customer whom has already been used in a transaction with it’s parent. I thought the only way you could do it was with a bit of file surgery, but Steve pointed out a better way.

Here’s the scenario. Astor Suites has Aaron Fitz as it’s child. Astor Suites sent Fabrikam a check that was used to pay one of Aaron’s invoices. The transaction was recorded and posted using the National Accounts feature in the Cash Receipts window. As with so many relationships, Aaron Fitz fell out of favor with Astor Suites and Aaron Fitz ran away and joined up with Adam Park Resort. Now we want to change Aaron Fitz’s National Account to reflect Adam Park Resort as the parent. We also want to remove Aaron Fitz from the National Account of Astor Suites.

If you simply go into the National Accounts screen and attempt to remove Aaron Fitz from Astor Suites, you cannot. You are greeted with the error message ‘You can’t remove this child customer ID. Apply records exist between the parent customer ID and this child customer ID.’

Here’s how Steve told us we can make the change. I ran through this example and it worked! Be aware, however, that those previously posted parent/child transactions are no longer properly represented in your transaction history. The financial information is OK, but there is no longer a trail back to the previous parent. Here’s Steve’s process:
  1. Create a new Customer with the correct National Account and all the same attributes as the existing Customer. (including the name and address information)
  2. Use PSTL Customer Combiner to move transactions to the new Customer.
  3. Delete the old Customer now that it has no transactions. (this will happen automatically)
  4. Use PSTL Customer Modifier to change the Customer Number of the new Customer to be the same as the old Customer.
Here are a couple of links to the original forum threads:
http://bit.ly/1NtJx3f
http://bit.ly/1slC1ya

Thanks everyone!
Until next time - Leslie Vail

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2 comments:

  1. Steve ErbachMay 13, 2016 at 8:00 PM

    Leslie,

    I do want to mention Lauri Romaniuk who said that her company actually automated this process. She related the story in the same thread on gpug.com.

    Thank you for the sparkle treatment. I think I'll give you a box of sparkly confetti in Tampa!

    Sincerely,

    "Sparkly" Steve Erbach

    ReplyDelete
  2. HeatherJanuary 7, 2018 at 1:33 PM

    Leslie and Steve,
    You really helped me out this week. Next question for thought for this rockstar team. Thoughts on maintaining relationships with both parents for a child? For the customer I am working with - we are stepping through your current work-around. We created new customer ID's for customers to use going forward. There are still outstanding invoices owed with the previous parent so for now maintaining both accounts.

    They do have the situation though in their business where there are multiple "parents" in charge of one child. In the divorced parents analogy - one parent pays for the schooling while the other parent pays for clothing. In the business analogy - one parent pays for one set of services - the other parent pays for other services - the child pays services neither parent will pay for. With GP for now - they set up the parent who pays the majority of the services. Then they have to enter/split receipts for a parent who pays for the secondary services (because all of these parents have multiple children for some they are primary, others secondary or tertiary). I looked and found workarounds documented for this in CRM, but no ideas for GP either as third party or other workarounds.

    Ideas??

    ReplyDelete